O/T stories 07/15
PUSSSYKATT
Bill Hoffmann, NY POST Wire Services
--A church has banned its star act from an upcoming fund-raiser after it found
out the band sang songs about oral and anal sex, abortion and incest. Bob
Schneider and the Scabs, a popular country group from Texas, was axed by the
Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis because "the frat-boy naughty thing doesn't
fly in the context of a church," said Sue McLean, who booked them.
--A group of bonehead car thieves called the cops after their motorcycles were
swiped - and were promptly arrested. Police in San Marcos, Calif., say the gang
was so stunned at the theft of their own bikes, they brazenly reported the
crime to sheriff's deputies, who connected them to the car theft and busted
them. "Yeah, there's some justice," said Sgt. Tom Bulow.
--Chalk one up for God. Highway officials have renamed Route 666, which runs
through New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, to give it less of devilish connotation.
It'll now be called U.S. 491, to the relief of many residents. "We've gotten
criticism over 'the Satan road' for years," said Edwin Begay of Tohatchi, N.M.
--Stamp collecting was stamped out at an Ohio prison after officials found tiny
amounts of marijuana being smuggled under the stamps on letters being sent to
an inmate. Cops say Caitlyn Derck, 19, was busted for shipping illegal
narcotics to the Lorain County Jail, where a prisoner allegedly collected them
to turn them into joints. Cops said the ingenious plot is a new one on them.
"This is the first time I've heard of . . . a case like this," said Lt. Rick
Fambro.
--An American man has been riding a German roller coaster for more than four
days - sleeping, eating and going to the toilet at speeds of up to 75 mph, even
after setting a new world record. Richard Rodriguez, 42, has already smashed
the record set by two Japanese riders who stayed on a roller coaster for 35 1/2
hours, but has shown no sign of giving up yet. He is only allowed a 15-minute
break every eight hours and has a special toilet inside his roller-coaster car.
* * *
Bizarre Game Targets Women: Hunting for Bambi: Parts 1 & 2
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1356380&nav=168XGqk0
It's a new form of adult entertainment, and men are paying thousands of dollars
to shoot naked women with paint ball guns. They're coming to Las Vegas to do
it. This bizarre new sport has captured the attention of people around the
world, but Channel 8 Eyewitness News reporter LuAnne Sorrell is the only person
who has interviewed the game's founder.
George Evanthes has never been hunting. "Originally I'm from New York. What am
I going to hunt? Squirrels? Someone's cats? Someone's dogs? I don't think so,"
said Evanthes. Now that he's living in Las Vegas, he's finally getting his
chance to put on his camouflage, grab a rifle and pull the trigger. But what's
in his scope may surprise you. He's not hunting ducks or deer, he's hunting
naked woman.
"I've done this three times," says Nicole, one of the three women allowing
themselves to be shot at. Two other women, Gidget and Skyler, claim they have
done this seven times.
Hunting for Bambi is the brainchild of Michael Burdick. Men pay anywhere from
$5000 to $10,000 for the chance to come to the middle of the desert to shoot
what they call "Bambis" with a paint ball gun. Burdick says men have come from
as far away as Germany. The men get a video tape of their hunt to take home and
show their friends.
Burdick says safety is a concern, but the women are not allowed to wear
protective gear -- only tennis shoes.
Burdick says hunters are told not to shoot the women above the chest, but he
admits not all hunters follow the rules. "The main goal is to be as true to
nature as possible. I don't go deer hunting and see a deer with a football
helmet on so I don't want to see one on my girl either," said Burdick.
The paint balls that come out of the guns travel at about 200 miles-per-hour.
Getting hit with one stings with clothes on, and when they hit bare flesh, they
are powerful enough to draw blood.
Evanthes shot one of the women and says, "I got the one with the biggest rack."
Gidget is the one who took the paint ball shot to the rear. She says, "It hurt.
It really hurt. I didn't think it was going to be that bad." When asked if she
cried she says,"yeah, a little bit."
So why do women agree to strip down and run around the desert dodging paint
balls? Nicole says it's good money. "I mean it's $2,500 if you don't get hit.
You try desperately not to and it's $1000 if you do," said Nicole.
The men and women say this is all good, clean fun, but in Part 2 of this
special report, reporter LuAnne Sorrell speaks with a psychologist who says for
some men playing out this sexual aggression may lead to other more violent acts
against women.
Bizarre Game Targets Women: Hunting for Bambi: Part 2
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1357838&nav=168XGqk0
"Hunting for Bambi" is the newest form of adult entertainment in Las Vegas. Men
are paying thousands of dollars to come here and hunt naked women. Could
playing out this type of violence lead to even more serious types of violence
against women? Channel Eight Eyewitness News reporter LuAnne Sorrell takes a
look.
* * *
DENVER POST....
Black bear mauls two campers in Rocky Mountain National Park
A black bear mauled two campers over the weekend, leaving them with torn scalps
and forcing rangers to shut down a number of backcountry camping sites. Patrick
Finan, 22, of Boulder and Tim Schuett, 23, of Glen Ellyn, Ill., were attacked
as they slept in separate tents early Sunday, officials said Monday. Finan was
bitten in the forehead and scalp before the bear let go, park spokesman Kyle
Patterson said. Schuett, who was awakened by the screams of his colleague, was
scratched on the head. The bear walked off when he yelled. Park rangers shut
down backcountry camping sites in the Odessa Gorge area of the park and were
trying to locate the bear. “This is a serious incident,” chief ranger Joe
Evans said. “All proper food storage was used in this campsite and the bear
still acted aggressively.” The last fatality in the park from a black bear
attack was in 1971.
* * *
Spoiled Rotten in a Sprawling Petropolis
NY By GLENN COLLINS
Fear Tourist: Please be aware that the New Yorker standing before you,
seemingly so brusque and busy and unfriendly — and so impatient with your
ambling ways — may actually be Skippy's Mom. Or Ruff-Ruff's Dad. And very
possibly baby talks to them. In public.
The concrete jungle is home to 1.5 million dogs (though fewer than 100,000 are
licensed, according to the Department of Health) and 1.8 million cats,
according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. And
many are animals of considerable means. They have pet acupuncturists who make
house calls. They have pet chauffeurs. They have pet nannies.
"The city is also the world capital of canine and kitty couture — indeed, of
all pet fashion," said Kathleen Hulser, the public historian of the New-York
Historical Society.
The city's petocracy is hardly new, according to an exhibition at the
Historical Society that opens today. New Yorkers have gone gaga about pets for
centuries.
The show, "Petropolis: A Social History of Urban Animal Companions," examines
the history of animals in New York and America's urban centers, offering more
than 200 paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs and objects that include
the famed 1910 Spratts Company dog food bowl (its corporate motto may sound
familiar: "Every Dog Has His Day").
Anthropomorphized artifacts in the exhibition's "pet obsession" section include
doggie sunglasses, Kitty Kaviar and Kitty CatBernet for rare morsels in a
cabernet bottle).
The exhibition — its co-curators are Ms. Hulser and Roberta J. M. Olson, a
curator of drawings at the museum — drew many of these treats from Karens for
People + Pets on Lexington Avenue near 82nd Street. The 28-year-old store
offers shoppertunities that include faux-fur pet jackets ($150), alligator
pet-carrying bags ($4,000, possibly inadvisable for carrying alligators) and
grooming sessions from $77 to $140.
"People can drop a couple of thousand dollars in 10 minutes on their pets
here," said Cammy Cutler, the manager. "One woman bought the sunglasses because
she was taking pictures for her dog's bark-mitzvah, and the dog was posed on a
Harley-Davidson."
The exhibition demonstrates that animal affection has characterized New York
since its earliest Dutch days. Peter Stuyvesant himself thought so much of his
son's beloved bay that he paid an artist for a 1666 painting of young Nicholas
William Stuyvesant in the saddle. And a century later, James Beekman
commissioned a painting of his daughter Mary with her pet lamb.
Educated Colonial Americans generally thought hierarchically about animals, Ms.
Hulser said, and in the natural order beasts were believed to be savage and
dumb — as in mute — and in need of humans to care for them. "There was a
lot of noblesse oblige," she said.
But only when convenient. The "savage beast" attitude made it possible, in the
19th century, for the city to hire "dog killers" to roam the streets clubbing
stray cats and dogs to rid the city of what were considered to be
disease-carrying pests, as the exhibition horrifyingly illustrates. And a horde
of free-range pigs scavenged for garbage before the city had an effective sewer
system. Only later did the dog killers become "dog catchers."
It was the very public mistreatment of the city's several hundred thousand
horses that engendered the creation of humane societies. The exhibition offers
the April 10, 1866, charter of the American Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals, bearing the signature of its founder, Henry Bergh, and
those of such notables as Horace Greeley, William Cullen Bryant, Hamilton Fish
and John Jacob Astor Jr.
The document "is equivalent to the animals' declaration of independence," said
Valerie K. Angeli, a spokeswoman for the society, which these days has a $41
million budget, employs 200 people and treats more than 20,000 pets per year in
its animal hospital.
But decades before the charter, animals had begun to come out of the barn and
into the parlor. As early as 1807, families were advertising for lost pets in
local newspapers, showing that, Ms. Hulser said, "by then these animals were
beloved enough to be missed."
MORE OF THE STORY: http://makeashorterlink.com/?R1FB23545
* * *
WTC GRAVE CLASH
NY POST/By WILLIAM NEUMAN
--------------------------------------------
The parents of a man killed in the World Trade Center terror attacks want to
place a replica of the Twin Towers next to his headstone - but the Catholic
cemetery in Connecticut where he is buried refuses to allow the tribute. "He
was proud of working in them [the towers] and he enjoyed being in them," said
Paul Wachtler, whose 25- year-old son, Gregory, was killed in the Sept. 11,
2001 atrocity.
"It's so people will remember. It's to pay tribute to the things that he
loved."
Wachtler and his wife, Nassima, have been fighting for over a year with the
Diocese of Bridgeport, which runs St. Mary's Cemetery in Greenwich, Conn.,
where Gregory is buried in a family plot.
The Wachtlers want to place 29-inch scale replicas of the Twin Towers, carved
in gray granite, beside the headstone.
But diocesan officials say they have a policy allowing only a single monument
on a plot that size.
Ray Capo, the diocese's director of cemeteries, said other families in the past
have been turned down when they made similar requests, and it wouldn't be fair
to make an exception now.
"We tried to explain that to the family. Close to 3,000 people died in the
World Trade Center and we sympathize," Capo said. "There's only so much that we
can do."
Capo has suggested to the Wachtlers that they sand-blast an image of the towers
on the headstone that currently stands on the plot, where Paul Wachtler's
parents are buried.
But the Wachtlers insist there is room to add the two stone towers - atop a
slightly enlarged pedestal - beside the existing headstone.
"We're going to keep on fighting until the people who are there now retire,"
said Paul Wachtler.
The plot contains room for three graves.
Paul Wachtler's parents had originally intended for him to be buried beside
them. But when Gregory died, Paul and Nassima decided to bury their only child
in the plot instead.
Gregory was a researcher at a mutual fund firm, Fred Alger Management, in the
north tower.
His remains were found in November 2001 near 5 WTC. The Wachtlers believe he
got out of the building and was killed by falling debris.
"He was killed because the real World Trade Center towers fell on him and
killed him and these are little ones that hopefully he will like and they won't
hurt him," Mr. Wachtler said.
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